Posted by: PatA (headsupsoftball1@aol.com) on Sun Jan 26 09:49:32 2003

I am in the middle of the "is the girls fastpitch softball swing different from the baseball swing debate". I have tried to find frame by frame pictures of softball players to compare to the swing shown in this sites "swing mechanics" page, but am having no luck. Does anyone know of any web sites that show any softball players swings frame by frame.
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> > Here is a clip of a BB and SB swing side by side
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> > http://www.geocities.com/leebell1970/bbandfp.html
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> What a great clip! It shows that you better have the rotational swing in softball. I don't know if this is valid because of film speed and type of pitch but I timed from when the pitchers let go of the ball and when it crossed the plate and the softball got there a second quicker. I have read (and experienced) that both softball and baseball hitters have less than .4 of a second to react to a pitch from a hard throwing pitcher. Because of the shorter distance (46 ft vs 60 ft) I think the softball hitter has less time to react to different types of pitches. That is why the change up is so effective in softball.

Bruce, your right in that the change is an effective pitch. What makes it most effective is the utter lack of balance and timing in fast pitch. Hitters are instructed, (or understand), that they should not move until they see the pitch after release. They basically go into panic mode at this point trying to catch up, add in weight shift mechanics and you have a recipe for disaster. Pitchers have found that they don't even need a good change to fool hitters, most changes, even at 14U or 16U, stink, they totally give it away. I guess it's so effective that they find no need in learning mechanically good off speed pitches.